(OT) Unauthorize copying ... was: Re: (no subject)

On Fri, 2003-01-17 at 16:12, Jim Strickland wrote: Should the umpteenth ancestor of Bach, Shakespeare, Mozart, et. all be able to hold their work hostage forever? These works are part of our culture and our culture is better for them being freely usable. I think we should go back to the way things were before the 1973 copyright extension. This was a 28 years with an additional 28 years if the copyright holder filed for an extension and registered a copy with the library of congress. As it stands now it can be impossible to find who owns copyright on say an old software package, and so even if you want to do the right thing and get permission to distribute it it's almost certainly not possible since the company has probably gone out of business and there are no records of who owns the rights. The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act was supposed to normalize US copyrights with the European Union making things more consistent (this was also the reasoning for the 1973 CEA). Of course it did not do that since when the act was pasted it retroactively whereas in most of Europe the old term was left in effect. The net result of the 1998 SBCEA was that some things are in the public domain in Europe, but still under copyright protection here. This has muddied the waters considerably with the possibility of stuff being imported into the USA, this is forcing the RIAA & MPAA to pressure congress to limit imports of European content product and them pressuring Europe to change their copyrights to "harmonize" them with the US. Regards, Paul P.S. My congressmen, wife and co-workers are tired of me ranting about this subject too! :^D